I think the bigger problem is not so much that the class is hard to play in any real sense (as, really, it's not), as that the playstyle - particularly for Mutilate - is fairly vulnerable to disruption.
As long as we're discussing issues with the class: I'd also like to see an improvement to our ability to keep Expose Armor up, particularly as Mutilate. As, right now, doing so is rather excessively painful in terms of DPS loss, meaning that rogues simply aren't a viable source of the debuff compared to warriors.
Both are great points; however, for fights that have stuns on a timer such a Maexna, it's simple enough to refresh your HfB stack before getting stunned. For fights where it is not, on the other side, the only factor between you having to spend 90/60 energy or not is how lucky you are, which is just a huge annoyance. Dropping Slice and Dice, though, isn't as harsh of a punishment as dropping Hunger for Blood, but would it be too much to ask for Cut to the Chase simply start a Slice and Dice at full point duration?
Regarding Expose Armor, I believe the best solution would be to add it to Cut to the Chase, as PvP rogues will skip this talent and therefore it has absolutely no effect in PvP. Of course, then, it would still be a pain to maintain as Combat, but at least that would fix the issue for Mutilate.
Another thing that I fully believe that is a current weakness of the class is the lack of any kind of synergy during Bloodlust if you aren't Combat. which is obviously something that largely skews the WWS parses (while I am at it, I apologize for bringing them into the discussion as I clearly see now that it was a mistake).
Originally Posted by Aldriana
But while Vulajin is only a pale shadow of my brilliance, he still contributes a fair amount to the community so I'd feel guilty
So if we're somewhat harder to play than other classes, I suspect they'd prefer to fix it by making the other classes somewhat more challenging.
...
So while I don't think the class necessarily needs to be made easier to play across the board, I do think some way of better dealing with interrupted combats would be helpful.
As long as we're discussing issues with the class: I'd also like to see an improvement to our ability to keep Expose Armor up, particularly as Mutilate. As, right now, doing so is rather excessively painful in terms of DPS loss, meaning that rogues simply aren't a viable source of the debuff compared to warriors.
On the point of making classes more challenging, I think we're seeing that with hunters in patch 3.0.8. Hunters just carried over their steady shot spam from TBC to WOTLK and that translated to virtually no learning curve and thus higher DPS numbers across the board. With the nerf to steady shot and the buffs to their other shots, it's clear that Blizzard is leaning towards this direction.
On the point of interrupted combat, rogues have always been penalized heavily for time off target and having buffs/debuffs drop off; HFB only exacerbated this fact. I think the mechanics need to change slightly so that this is less so.
The expose armor issue has been raised multiple times to Blizzard in that there is a high opportunity cost for a rogue applying this debuff and most guilds just have a warrior do it instead. This indeed needs to be changed if Blizzard proclaims expose armor as one of the utilities that rogues bring.
Another issue that I'm worried about is the rogue situation in heroics and 10 mans as rogues tend to be a buff sponge more so than other classes and the lack of buffs may translate to less DPS numbers comparatively to other DPS classes. This may lead to negative connotations overall to rogues in small group settings which is unfortunate since this is Blizzard's main target audience.
There is also the issue of weapon itemization. This was a problem in TBC before arenas and it seems to be a problem now. In TBC, it was Latro's (a blue weapon) or bust until T6. In WOTLK, it's not quite so clear if that epic dagger drop is really better than Librarian's Paper Cutter (another blue weapon). In the caster weapon case, ANY epic weapon drop with spellpower on it was guaranteed to be an upgrade to your blue spellpower weapon. Unfortunately, this is not so for rogues.
Last edited by Cally : 12/19/08 at 11:34 AM.
Reason: Spelling
Another issue that I'm worried about is the rogue situation in heroics and 10 mans as rogues tend to be a buff sponge more so than other classes and the lack of buffs may translate to less DPS numbers comparatively to other DPS classes. This may lead to negative connotations overall to rogues in small group settings which is unfortunate since this is Blizzard's main target audience.
Yeah, and I think the best, yet most difficult (if not impossible) fix for this would be to make all classes need the same buffs to perform well, and by same buffs I mean for their type of dps, physical or magical, and have them all scale the same, so that an unbuffed rogue, enhancement shaman, warrior, dk, etc all do 2k dps, and a buffed of each of those classes does 4k dps or whatever the numbers may be, but you get my point.
However realistically, I doubt this will happen, and some classes will never be completely "unbuffed" because they carry their own buffs.
This is one issue I've had with rogues ever since TBC came out and that is that in 5 mans I've always been outperformed by equally geared equally skilled players in regards to damage over the run of an instance, sure on bosses I can usually do nearly top numbers but on the way to them I would not average out to be top dps.
The FoK change I think will go a long way towards making us competative in 5 man heroics at this point though, so I am happy and/or excited to see that, it'll also help cut down on the annoyance of all the trash in Naxx that according to a blue (iirc), "we would be CCing in 25 mans and not aoeing down".
A large part of the reason I think why rogues are seeing such low numbers, is our play style was stuck into a box and shaken around heavily then dumped on the table. Pre 3.0 (especially in BT) I considered myself an optimal rogue, I could usually go an entire boss fight without dropping SnD and keeping all my rotations pretty good, Gorefiend was probably the peak of my performance optimization, as I'm sure it was for a lot of rogues. Now I consider myself a good rogue at best (at least when I was combat), with the randomness of SS glyph it kinda throws a wrench in your rotation and I found that I had a harder time watching SnD and Rupture because I was paying more attention to my combo points. Mutilate is even more so like that.
At this point, I love the way Rogues play. It feels more like I'm in the movie, than in the theater watching it. It particularly reminds me of my Counter-Strike days where a .1 second reaction time makes a difference. It tends to be more reactive and having to be situationally aware to keep your stacks up.
I feel the play style of a Rogue has improved dramatically for me, but the performance, I admit is a bit lacking. But not substantially. I am able to keep in top 5 in my guild and topping some fights while losing in others and thats fine. Would I like for us to do more DPS? Naturally yes. I rolled a DPS class to DPS of course I want it to be higher. Is it justifiable for us to be heads and shoulders above other DPS classes? No. BM hunters are getting nerfed for that very reason.
Something along the lines of attaching the expose debuff to rupture and maybe reducing the damage? it seems like expose is a terrible waste of personal dps as any spec except broken HAT spec, even if it is actually an increase in raid dps, it definitely costs rogues a lot of time and energy that could be spent on more "important" things, making it easier to keep up would also massively improve (in some cases) our dps in 5 and 10 mans, which would be pretty nice.
While expose does drop my dps a lot keeping it up on some fights with our pala/bear/death knight tanks, the problem with combining it with rupture would be the interaction with warrior tanks own sunder stack.
I must admit, I'm quite despondant about the state of our DPS so far.
Granted, it has only been a month or so since LK launch, but our liabilities were always outweighed by our ability to top the meters.
We bring almost nothing else to the table.
Sure, AP is nice on Gluth, but it's a gimmick. Make AP work with *every* enrage, and maybe people would bring us more.
I was in a US top 200 guild in Sunwell; the only people I ever had to worry about were Warlocks and Hunters, and usually the rogues came out on top.
Now... well, now, I just feel like hanging up the rogue and playing my hunter.
I refuse to spec into HaT because I really wanted to see what I was able to pump out "legitimately." Now it seems I pretty much have little choice in the matter.
Unless they give us some serious utility to make up for the buff to everyone else's DPS, I see my days as a rogue numbered.
The state of rogues? Sad.
Aldriana, Vulajin, Tin, Chalon and all of the others thanks for all of your hard work.
I think Monistatus said it well with how i feel. I've the same level of experience Sunwell through all of WotLK now, and I'm feeling that our utility used to be out weighted by our dps, and our dps is now homogenized to be equal to all other class single target dps, and way below multi target.
The simple fact is that we are a pure dps class and we aren't getting it done due to gear, boss armor, scaling, equalizing of other classes dps, etc. I'm hoping the GC quote saying they were taking a hard look at rogue dps is true and that they will make some changes.
While expose does drop my dps a lot keeping it up on some fights with our pala/bear/death knight tanks, the problem with combining it with rupture would be the interaction with warrior tanks own sunder stack.
Edit: Oh whoops, I was looking at the earlier suggestion to consider attaching it to CttC. Yes, attaching it to Rupture would probably be A Bad Idea.
Well, unless they somehow make it so that it doesn't interfere with threat generation from sunder, i.e. sunder will generate the same threat and stacks as usual even with EA up although EA still overrides the debuff part.
I don't see why they couldn't just make them work together, my thoughts on attaching it to rupture were kinda twofold, 1) it still makes warriors sunder useful and/or important as you'll most likely never have complete 100% rupture uptime, sure you could probably get very high 90's for uptime but without overriding rupture (which you can't always do) there will always be a little bit of downtime. and 2) it amplifies the importance of your rotation as a rogue in any situation where you do not have a warrior.
obviously when I suggested attaching it to rupture having it not screw with warrior threat via sunder was something I was conveying without actually saying it.
The problem I see with attaching it to cttc is you're over exaggerating 1 talent/skill to the point where if you were in a situation where it dropped, it would be overly devastating to rogues, and at the same time, it would be too easy to keep going. anyways, this is kinda getting off track and into the wishlisty category.
Suffice to say that expose armor in it's current state is an issue when there aren't warriors present, rogue dps is probably pretty good, maybe slightly low (I can't really comment because I have completely sub optimal weapons due to bad luck with drops), but the learning curve/skill curve has changed enough that a lot of us are feeling it and it may take us longer to get adjusted to "optimum". And they are buffing our non boss utility/damage in the form of FoK and buffing our survivability (even more than it already is) via feint.
Just throwing a suggestion into the mix. HfB has one big issue, if you let it drop, it's a big loss to your rotation getting it back up to 3 stacks. Removing the stacking mechanic would make letting it drop (still not an acceptable practice) not the huge hit it currently is. We still have to spin plates to keep it and the other timers up, that's not making the cycle any easier, it just makes any hiccup in that cycle less of a wheels-fall-off situation.
CttC is a great ability, making HfB possibly do the same to Rupture as what CttC does to SnD would also make it a bit more indicative as a 61 pt talent. Doing this we're back to refreshing two bars like TBC but still different enough from current combat spec to be a unique spec. This would mean some serious changes to CP building and energy cost, possibly put HfB on the CP scale like SnD and Rup or increasing the energy cost, but it's a step in the right direction of making the spec less about spinning plates and more about staying on target.
I really don't understand the "the cycle is too hard!" complaint. I mean seriously, HfB dropping is something you should never let happen after the first hour or so of raiding as Mutilate. Get Need to Know, it will solve all your problems.
The cycle being "too hard" isn't the reason why we are likely 2-3% behind some of the other classes.
Tricks of the Trade costs 15 energy, so you will lose personal dps by using it =). The raid will however gain dps, especially if you time it with BL on a mage when the target is below 35% health.
You quantify oneself "loosing" energy, yet attribute the benefit to the raid?
ToTT, imho, causes detriment to the rogue by reducing their dps effectivenss, by giving it to someone else - they gain the benefit. Not the whole raid. Its a one to one relationship.
But even in your example the "raid buff" has to be perfectly timed and executed. It sounds all to cumbersome and useless overall. Most every other class buff lasts a duration which doesn't impact their own dps and it affects ALL raid members.
As I mentioned previously, ToTT is just that, a 'trick'. Its like our bag of tricks. Very selective in usage and requires a unique setup to use effectively. ie.. two rogues bouncing it off each other, otherwise its a gimmick talent. I'll take it as it has its usage, but to me its the minimal.
Is this more useful, to the thread moderator, as we don't want this thread to go the way of the doe-doe bird.
So to not step on toes, here is my list:
Issues:
Low white damage
hit cap too high (or reduce miss chance with whites)
lack of meaningful raid buff
mut/ss/hem. are all hitting a tad low
how to fix:
Give rogues a learned precision skill that is stackable w/ com. talent.
increase offhand damage to: 15/30/45/60/75%
modify tricks so that it buffs both rogue and target for x secs by 8%
- reduce cost of slice n' dice and increase speed.
There are also talents that can be buffed .. ala throwing specialization with FoK by increasing its damage by 5/10%
Here is a novel idea:
Whenever a rogue enters a heroic or raid, just have him receive "Garona's Blessing" which gives him 'x' buff. Since I am sure all heroic/raid instances have an id algorithm that will differentiate it from a pvp environment. Therefore, buff the rogue in heroic/raid play, no otherwise. lol.
You quantify oneself "loosing" energy, yet attribute the benefit to the raid?
ToTT, imho, causes detriment to the rogue by reducing their dps effectivenss (what is new), by giving it to someone else - they gain the benefit. Not the whole raid. Its a one to one relationship.
But even in your example the "raid buff" has to be perfectly timed and executed. It sounds all to cumbersome and useless overall. Most every other class buff lasts a duration which doesn't impact their own dps and it affects ALL raid members.
As I mentioned previously, ToTT is just that, a 'trick'. Its like our bag of tricks. Very selective in usage and requires a unique setup to use effectively. ie.. two rogues bouncing it off each other, otherwise its a gimmick talent. I'll take it as it has its usage, but to me its the minimal.
By raid dps I mean the total raid dps, if one you have 3 people doing 3000 dps each or 9000 raiddps. You lose 100 dps if you cast TotT on CD, whilst your target gain 200 dps (these are no actual numbers, I made them up just make it easier to prove my point). Your dps will go down to 2900, while the other guy will up his dps to 3200. Now the total raid dps is 9100, a gain of 100 dps. Do you see where I'm going?
By raid dps I mean the total raid dps, if one you have 3 people doing 3000 dps each or 9000 raiddps. You lose 100 dps if you cast TotT on CD, whilst your target gain 200 dps (these are no actual numbers, I made them up just make it easier to prove my point). Your dps will go down to 2900, while the other guy will up his dps to 3200. Now the total raid dps is 9100, a gain of 100 dps. Do you see where I'm going?
oh. I totally understand what you are saying. My point was that it was situational and we can't quantify the "dps" increase of the target and if that will be worth the sacrifice to one's own dps. Also, I have never ever seen a raid leader or a raid as a whole say "rogue, you buffed that one person by 'x' amount. Good going for the whole raid". Meaning, we realistically in a perfect environment buff one person by 'x' amount, while reducing our own dps - is that a viable trade off considering most other classes can buff all raid members without sacrificing their own dps. When looked at it like that, our raid buff is little league vs. major league. If they removed the rogue from the equation, what would be overall dps loss of their buff be? Now remove 'insert class here' and see what the net loss of the raid is. There will be no comparision. I do understand your point though.
I'm leaning towards "not worth using except as a ghetto misdirect at aggro wipes, to be quite honest". After the changes to FoK, it will be situationally very useful for AoE tanking situations.
I think the big problem with rogue buffs as compared to the buffs other classes provide to raids boils down simply to this:
To give the raid a buff, the rogue must sacrifice their personal dps, and sometimes, don't gain any utility themselves from the buff.
Other classes, however, not only are able to provide buffs without sacrificing anything in regard to their role (warrirors build threat when providing sunder, as an example. Shadow Priests don't sacrifice damage, or healing, by providing buffs to locks) but also gain a personal benefit as well, be it increased damage directly, or indirectly by easing their cycle.
If Blizzard wants to equalize damage amongst the dps classes, that is fine, but rogue's buffs should be changed to provide personal benefit. Even more importantly it shouldn't cause a significant loss (or any at all, frankly) to personal dps to grant the buff.
Last edited by Geei : 12/19/08 at 4:18 PM.
Reason: Grammar
Actually a lot of classes sacrifice dps for raid buffs. Ret pallies sacrifice a bit of personal dps to provide crit to the raid (iirc), warlocks do curse of elements which is a huge sacrifice over doom/CoA, our enhancement shaman is always talking about how he sacrifices something like 6 talent points that could go towards personal dps to improve raid dps (admittedly I haven't looked at the tree at all since 3.0) it's just that our buff is a little bit more annoying to use than other classes, and it's talents for them, whereas for us, we all get it.
You bring up a good point about talent costs, I was referring more specifically to the immediate dps costs of integrating our short term buffs into our rotation.
Can anyone point out to me a valid reason for deadly to be consumed by envenom? When talent leaks of the past have pointed to the removal of envenom wiping deadly, it seemed reasonable to me. I ask this simply in regard to our burst dmg. I think our burst in pve is hindered by this affect, and it does not make a lot of sense to me.
It would be easy to remedy be either removing it from the skill, putting the modified behavior in a talent, or even a glyph. Considering the lack of mut based glyphs, that may be the simplest.
Well, I don't think Envenom consuming DP charges really hurts our PvE burst that much. Assuming others are engaged on the target, you can pretty safely Mutilate even if you consumed all of your remaining DP charges, and pretty much are guaranteed either a Hunter has a Serpent Sting up or another rogue has DP up. Of course, if you're talking about fast target switching to adds that die very quickly, that may not always be the case.
The other factor to take into account is ideally, the majority of your Envenoms are going to be 4 CP Envenoms, so if you pool until you have 5 DP stacks, only 4 charges are consumed and you will still be running a DP stack after the Envenom.
And generally I would say that after the Envenom, you very quickly will get back to 3-4 stack just from the +poison chance buff, unless the RNG hates you of course. We do lose some DPS from the time the stacks reapply, no doubt, but I don't think it's that significant of a loss. It would be pretty straightforward to mess around with a spreadsheet to model the theoretical case of Envenom not dropping DP stacks to see what that difference would be.
As an off-the-cuff estimate: Envenom not dropping DP would make for about a 60 DPS difference in current best in slot gear. Certainly significant, but not earth-shaking.
As an off-the-cuff estimate: Envenom not dropping DP would make for about a 60 DPS difference in current best in slot gear. Certainly significant, but not earth-shaking.
Possible candidate effect for an Envenom glyph? Alternatively, an Envenom glyph could increase the duration of the +proc rate buff. What would be the DPS benefit of a Deadly Poison glyph that let DP stack up to 6 times?
Note that the consensus among the top-end rogues here seems to be that the steady-state best-in-slot DPS needs buffing by a few percent at most. That's around the benefit you'd expect from optimised damage glyphs, since each one is ~1 talent point, thus ~= 1% DPS. Right now a Mutilate spec only really benefits from the Rupture glyph, with the S'n'D one being "nice to have" but of little effect once the cycle is established. That gives us two "free" glyph slots which could adjust the top end DPS by a couple of points. GC's already posted (in relation to elemental shamans) that they didn't think the spec got enough from its glyphs: Mutilate is a prime candidate for the same attention.
12/18/08, 5:07 PM
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